More COVID testing leads to delays, long lines
Surge makes contact tracing far more difficult
The Memphis area has seen a surge of interest in COVID-19 testing in recent weeks, leading to long lines and lengthy delays in lab turnaround times.
In some cases, delays have stretched for days.
Such delays pose serious obstacles toward combating the pandemic because any delay in test results makes contact tracing far more difficult.
The long delays also stress patients, since anyone who takes a COVID-19 test is instructed to go into isolation until they have a result, and a multi-day wait can disrupt work and family life.
Similar processing delays have been reported at the national level.
“The challenge that we and every other test site is facing right now is a massive backlog of lab tests,” said Jenny Koltnow, a spokeswoman for Church Health Center, an organization that serves people without insurance.
“And there are – in almost every site they’re experiencing anywhere between five and 10 day waiting periods to get test results. And it´s needless to say creating a considerable amount of concern across the community.”
The organization conducts testing at its main site at Crosstown Concourse and has also hosted mass testing events targeted toward the Hispanic population.
The delays prompted the organization to cancel a mass testing event that had been scheduled on Friday.
When the virus was first identified in Memphis in March, the only COVID-19 tests were available at a state lab in Nashville.
Since that time, the number of available testing centers has exploded. As of Friday, a total of more than 150,000 tests have been conducted countywide, according to the Shelby County Health Department.
On Wednesday, Alisa Haushalter, director of the Shelby County Health Department, said the county is now at testing capacity – people are using all the tests available, for now.
In the past, results were usually returned in one to two days, whereas now they are sometimes received in five to seven days, she said.
That’s too slow for contact tracing to
work.
“...If you’re going to do contact tracing and the test comes back in five to seven days, you might as well not do contact tracing because it’s already too late,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told The Wall Street Journal recently.
Nashville drops Memphis-based lab company
Authorities in Nashville stopped using Memphis-based American Esoteric Laboratories to process tests from cityrun sites due to delays in test result reporting, The Tennessean reported.
“The reporting delay also hampered Nashville’s contact tracing efforts because it left the city blind to 312 infections that dated back as far as midjune,” the article says.
It was reportedly the third time results from AEL had been delayed.
AEL’S parent company, Sonic Healthcare USA, did not make a company representative available for an interview.
Spokesperson Kristin Barnebey said the company wouldn’t comment beyond two statements it had already issued: one statement said AEL was facing a significantly increased demand in COVID-19 testing and was working to deal with supply shortages and to prioritize testing for the most vulnerable patients.
She also pointed to a statement from Julie Khani, president of the American Clinical Laboratory Association.
“While our members are collectively performing hundreds of thousands of tests each day, the anticipated demand for COVID-19 testing over the coming weeks will likely exceed members’ testing capacities,” the statement says. “This significant increase in demand could extend turnaround times for test results.”
The statement notes that testing supplies are limited.
“Every country across the globe is in need of essential testing supplies, like pipettes and reagents, and that demand is likely to increase in the coming months. We are in active conversations with the Administration and supply partners about ways to address these challenges.”
‘Pool testing’ concept set to arrive in Memphis
In related news, Dr. Manoj Jain, an infectious disease expert who is advising the city of Memphis, said the FDA has just approved the Memphis lab company Poplar Healthcare to conduct pool testing for COVID-19.
Pool testing is a concept that could dramatically increase the number of tests conducted in the Memphis area.
In essence, multiple tests could be run at once.
A recent article in the health and medicine web site Stat News describes the concept this way: Imagine a warehouse with 100 employees. Every so often, the company could test the staff.
“And instead of running 100 separate analyses, it could group 10 samples into a pool and only run 10 analyses,” the article says.
“If one of those pools came back positive, those 10 employees could be retested individually to see who was infected and could remain out of work in the interim,” the article says.
“The 90 other employees, in the pools that tested negative, wouldn’t need to be retested.”
The concept could dramatically increase the number of tests conducted nationally.
James Sweeney, CEO of Poplar Healthcare, said pool testing could be used to test students and teachers as schools reopen, particularly in places where there’s a low prevalence of the virus.
It could also be used to test employees of a big company like Fedex, he said.
Reporters Katherine Burgess and Sam Hardiman contributed to this article.
Investigative reporter Daniel Connolly welcomes tips and comments from the public. Reach him at 529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercialappeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly.